COVID-19 long-term toll signals billions in health-care costs ahead
Studies of patients keep uncovering new complications
NEW YORK - Late in March, Laura Gross, 72, was recovering from gall bladder surgery in her Fort Lee, New Jersey, home when she became sick again.
Her throat, head and eyes hurt, her muscles and joints ached and she felt like she was in a fog. Her diagnosis was COVID-19. Four months later, these symptoms remain.
Gross sees a primary care doctor and specialists including a cardiologist, pulmonologist, endocrinologist, neurologist, and gastroenterologist.
“I’ve had a headache since April. I’ve never stopped running a low-grade temperature,” she said.
Studies of COVID-19 patients keep uncovering new complications associated with the disease.
With mounting evidence that some COVID-19 survivors face months, or possibly years, of debilitating complications, healthcare experts are beginning to study possible long-term costs.
Bruce Lee of the City University of New York (CUNY) Public School of Health estimated that if 20% of the U.S. population contracts the virus, the one-year post-hospitalization costs would be at least $50 billion, before factoring in longer-term care for lingering health problems. Without a vaccine, if 80% of the population became infected, that cost would balloon to $204 billion.
Some countries hit hard by the new coronavirus - including the United States, Britain and Italy - are considering whether these long-term effects can be considered a “postCOVID syndrome,” according to Reuters interviews with about a dozen doctors and health economists.
Some U.S. and Italian hospitals have created centers devoted to the care of these patients and are standardizing follow-up measures.
Britain’s Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are each leading national studies of COVID-19’s long-term impacts. An international panel of doctors will suggest standards for mid- and long-term care of recovered patients to the World Health Organization (WHO) in August.
More than 17 million people have been infected by the new coronavirus worldwide, about a quarter of them in the
United States.
Healthcare experts say it will be years before the costs for those who have recovered can be fully calculated, not unlike the slow recognition of HIV, or the health impacts to first responders of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
They stem from COVID-19’s toll on multiple organs, including heart, lung and kidney damage that will likely require costly care, such as regular scans and ultrasounds, as well as neurological deficits that are not yet fully understood.
A JAMA Cardiology study found that in one group of COVID-19 patients in Germany aged 45 to 53, more than 75 per cent suffered from heart inflammation, raising the possibility of future heart failure.
A Kidney International study found that over a third of COVID-19 patients in a New York medical system developed acute kidney injury, and nearly 15 per cent required dialysis.
Dr. Marco Rizzi in Bergamo, Italy, an early epicenter of the pandemic, said the Giovanni XXIII Hospital has seen close to 600 COVID-19 patients for follow-up. About 30 per cent have lung issues, 10% have neurological problems, 10 per cent have heart issues and about nine per cent have lingering motor skill problems. He co-chairs the WHO panel that will recommend long-term follow-up for patients.
“On a global level, nobody knows how many will still need checks and treatment in three months, six months, a year,” Rizzi said, adding that even those with mild COVID19 “may have consequences in the future.